Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I've been promoting OOo to many people who are reluctant to spend all the money for Windows. But now new sheets are giving me formula errors Err: 509!

What do I do about this! It is only with new sheets. If I open an Excel file, no problem with formulas. But this is not the case with all the users that do not have EXCEL!

It is hard to say what the problem is without more information. Can you give an example of a formula that is giving this error? Does the error appear for all formulas, or just some? Could you upload a file? You can use the Upload Attachment tab that is just below the area where you type a response.

FJCC wrote:It is hard to say what the problem is without more information. Can you give an example of a formula that is giving this error? Does the error appear for all formulas, or just some? Could you upload a file? You can use the Upload Attachment tab that is just below the area where you type a response.

=IF(C53>0,C53-C52,0)

If I replace the "," with a ";" it works. But that does not make for a smooth transition for other people who choose OOo instead of MS Excel.

IIRC, the official builds of OOo have always used semicolons for separator. Some third party builds offer the "enhancement" of using commas, to look more like Excel.

Also, when opening Excel files, the transition to semicolons has never been an issue.

The issue arises when users come from Excel to Calc, need to enter formulas with functions, and use the period (dot) as the decimal separatot. (Roughly half of the world uses comma for decimal separator, and for those countries, Excel also provides the semicolon for parameter separation within functions.)

For those having the issue, the change will not be a great transition. Most people will get used to it in virtually no time.

SquintKid wrote:If I replace the "," with a ";" it works. But that does not make for a smooth transition for other people who choose OOo instead of MS Excel.

I don't understand your reasoning. OOo uses a semicolon to separate the arguments of a function. You can't just put in a comma and expect it to work. If the file is exported to the xls format the export filter will deal with changing the semicolons to commas. If you feel it is absolutely necessary to use commas, I think one of the alternate version of OOo does use commas, but that is only a vague memory.

My Excel uses semicolons as argument separator just like OOo does. In Excel it is a matter of the installed language version. My Excel is German, uses comma as decimal separator and thus it has to be another list separator.

http://go-oo.org is a derivate of OOo which uses semicolon or comma depending on the current locale setting (every installation of OOo supports all number format locales).